Why is this line important? One of the biggest challenges facing global negotiations today is how to make sure that nation states comply with their international commitments. So far, it is mostly rich countries that have forced compliance on developing countries, by using the threat of withdrawing aid, or using trade sanctions. For instance, the US invoked a national legislation, the Pelly Amendment, to force tiny Taiwan to meet its commitments under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and implement legislation to protect the tiger.

Sometimes, trade sanctions have been used not just to ensure that developing countries meet commitments they make at multilateral negotiations, but to even force them to comply with national environmental legislation or morally acceptable standards of the rich countries, which they have not subscribed to in any global fora. For instance, the US banned shrimp imports from several Asian countries because these countries did not use turtle excluder devices (TEDs) while catching shrimp. At no point had the affected countries committed to using TEDs. Yet, the US felt justified in forcing them to do so by using a trade lever.

All's fair in ensuring environmental compliance and protecting species, conservationist groups may say. But the extremely unfair nature of such one-sided tools becomes apparent when applied to the current compliance quandary faced by the world -- how do we make the US meet its commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), or even make the US take moral responsibility for the disasters its behaviour will inflict on the rest of the world, particularly on the poor and vulnerable? What tools do poor countries have that will be affected by global warming to force the US to take action? To quote an example that we at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) often give, can a puny country like Bangladesh, which will be severely impacted by global warming, impose trade sanctions against well-padded Uncle Sam or threaten to withdraw aid? Consider the sheer ridiculousness of this suggestion to understand the totally undemocratic nature of trade and aid compliance tools.

Such tools can only be used by rich nations against the poor. Yet, they have not come up for criticism from the global community, though several academicians have studied the relative merits of using "carrots" (usually promises of aid) and "sticks" (usually trade sanctions) to ensure compliance with global environmental commitments. Few have considered the inherently undemocratic nature of such sticks, or have not been concerned about the lack of democracy, even when they have sometimes been built into global treaties. For instance, the Montreal Protocol relies on the threat of withholding financial aid from its Multilateral Fund, set up to help developing countries meet their commitments to move to ozone-friendly technologies, to make developing countries comply.

The challenge of finding democratic tools for compliance that are equally available to the rich and poor is one of the crucial requirements for global democracy, and good global governance. Meanwhile, until such tools are identified, rich countries have to restrain from using such undemocratic means. They must not succumb to the relative ease of bullying poor countries to adopt environmentally acceptable behaviour, or to do more than they have agreed to around a multilateral table by using financial might (God forbid if any other country found a way to force the US to do more than they commit to, leave alone what they have committed to! Senators would crawl out of the woodwork to defend US sovereignty and the rights of the American people to do exactly as they jolly well please).

If rich countries are indeed serious about practicing the "good governance" that they keep thrusting on developing countries, then they should have absolutely no hesitation in removing the brackets on this one crucial line in the trade text. Otherwise, not only are they are no better than the worst breed of bureaucrats who are too intoxicated by their levers of power to give them up, but they are also hypocrites who are incapable of practicing what they preach.